that's mrs. mediocrity to you

an abundance of optimism
can’t ever be a bad thing

really

though sometimes the glare
can force you to turn
from those stricken
with the smile of this affliction

as you raise a filter
to the black hole sun
you grew up singing

singed by this little too much
and all that nothing
and color color everywhere

when some days you just want some

black and white

grey matters

taupe tenacity

anything to make you look away

because there is always dust in the corner

and hemingway said all you have to do
is write one true sentence

There is always dust in the corner.

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to make me believe in magic

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I feel the cold seeping into my bones
on a day too warm for that to be true.

But some days are like that,
filled with mysterious ache and ailment,
and I think, again,
how tied to the earth we all are,
and how often we forget to listen.

Everything feels frozen.
Time, my feet,
the calendar, this heart.

I find myself holding my breath,
watching the sky for a sign.

The crows will carry me home.

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those were the words you left on the counter
next to the cat food and two bananas gone too far ripe
the kind just waiting for someone to make an effort
but that takes foresight and a dash of clarity and instead
you wrote a sentence on a red-stained slip of paper
more resignation than wish
or at least
acceptance

already i know what my answer will be
but i like the look of empty space
the box of possibility left unlined
in the corner of a kitchen meant for tea
and forgotten pots boiling over

in the corner i write corrosion
in pencil small enough
to be practically invisible

just before i flip the page to map out another list
half-filled with crisp greens and purple edges
in the shapes we’ll throw away

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and that is enough

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Some days I think it all comes down to self-preservation. The things we do to survive. Then I remember that it isn’t about anything at all, there are no answers, only questions. And survival is such a relative term these days. Read a book about the way life was lived 100 years ago, or 200, and survival becomes an entirely different word. By necessity, survival used to be a physical accomplishment. For so many of us these days, it’s a mental one.

I find this fascinating.

The internet was birthed to take up that slack, the distance between all my basic needs are met and now what do I do with all these thoughts? We share everything these days, and still, everyone seems to be looking for something. Already it’s changing the world.

I find this fascinating and frightening, all at once.

The other day I heard a story on the news about a program that’s being developed that will take all of a person’s social media input and, after they die, use it to create an artificial intelligence type of interaction, creating new output to mimic and offer new things that person might say. Using everything we have ever said on the internet to re-create our personality. It was presented as a way to cushion grief, so that people could still have a relationship with someone they have lost, at least virtually speaking.

I keep thinking about this, wondering if we would all like the artificial self that would be created by the things we type and offer up on all these venues. How true would it be to who we really are? Would it be a better version of us, or a worse one?

Again, fascinating. Again, frightening. Also: enchanting.

I sit and watch Mother Nature outside my window, here on my own tiny piece of earth, and then I watch the whole word inside this window, a computer screen that contains infinity. No wonder my brain hurts.

I drink my tea and watch the birds forage for their breakfast and think that I should walk outside and feed them.

And then I start thinking about survival all over again.

There is so much information. When what we really need is food.

At least that’s the way I think it goes.

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you never mentioned you were in love
she says

words falling to the ground
with the whisper of melt

landing
trapped
in the outline
of forgotten footprints

heading off
in a different
direction

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..

Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today,
where Abhra has us writing poems about secrets.

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and here i sit, waiting for something i’ll never have and
my mind keeps screaming about wasted time
and the words are all stacked in the corner
neat as a pile of laundry
and my heart is always racing
even though
there’s no time to begin

four walls and one window and i am cold
but never frozen and two crows just flew by
to remind me of balance

as the sun pokes it way through a cross hatched horizon
painting colors with a brush of no hurry

spinning yarn for another day’s sweater

i found an arrow on the floor
three days ago
and just left it there

pointing southwest

it didn’t seem to be meant
for me

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Everything around me crackles with electricity.
January would be silent, except for your anger.

When the whole world is frozen,
even a white flower becomes prism.

Last night I held a piece of glass to the moon,
hoping for eclipse.
The dead of winter whispered giggles of mockery,
and I walked back inside, bruised
but never broken.

I keep reading about survival.
Already, we’ve forgotten so much.

It used to be that everything was relative,
but now, everything is virtual,
and you can’t fake the smell of narcissism.
(I meant to say narcissus.)

Our collective soul is starving,
and we feed it the new truth.

Suffering was always meant to save us,
and laughter is a sky
filled with birds.

they say lightning never strikes the same place twice
but what if white light wakes you up every morning
and sometimes it thunders in the dead cave of winter

but the moon
rises up through the trees
even when frozen

and silt settles on everything
after a flood
concealing what lies
beneath a smooth surface

and magic makes no sense
but neither does reality

the miracle is that any tree survives

holding out bare branches
in forever expectation
of life going on

just the way it does

even uprooted

even split wide open

even silenced by
a lack

of wind

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